


Marin Howard's Haunted Dolls

by misscai



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Character, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Dolls, F/M, Haunting, Humor, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Violence, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 22:07:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14198661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misscai/pseuds/misscai
Summary: Marin Howard makes dolls that are (in)famous for getting haunted. Increased demand for her products forces Marin to bring in an intern from the nearby university. Her boyfriend, (super)naturally, gets jealous.





	Marin Howard's Haunted Dolls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CalsLaundry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalsLaundry/gifts).



> Originally part of my senior portfolio for college!! I was quite proud of the way it turned out, thought I'd share it here if anyone likes humor and ghost boyfriends. I know I do.
> 
> Gifted to TheVerbalTypo for all his support as I wrote this! Much love for the best friend <3

Marin was watching the intern as he approached the front porch, looking baffled at the normalcy of the house. He peeked into the bushes—why, she didn’t know. Maybe he thought she had some kind of cemetery among the hydrangeas. An endless source of spirits for her to funnel into tiny doll bodies. She rolled her eyes, though he couldn’t see her, and took a sip of lemonade. Spirits couldn’t be funneled. Their personalities were much too big to be subdued like that.

He hadn’t knocked yet, still searching her upstairs windows for ghostly figures. She walked over to the door, her bare feet nearly silent as she moved across the hardwood flooring. The freshly-oiled hinges of the door didn’t squeak when she opened it, and the intern seemed oblivious to her presence until she spoke. “The dolls aren’t haunted,” she said simply, making him jump. “Not while they’re here. So you can stop looking for white ladies in the window, or whatever you were hoping to see.”

“I—I didn’t—”

“Your application didn’t say you were a paranormal enthusiast.” She crossed her arms, looking him up and down.

“I’m not, I—”

“Good. I don’t want anyone like that. Not that they’d find anything even if they tried, because the dolls aren’t haunted.” She turned on her heel, waving the boy in and not bothering to see if he followed because she knew he would. It wasn’t every day that the infamous Marin Howard let people see her doll shop. Or her, period. She liked her privacy and with the fame she’d attracted among ghost hunters and haunted collectors and teenagers in their emo phase, she was careful to keep her inner circle small. If it were up to her, she’d never have hired this intern—whose gaze was _still_ jumping around, trying to catch a glimpse of a Ouija board or sacred effigy as if they’d be displayed on her coffee table. But the demand for her products was only growing after the Warrens—the couple who owned the haunted object museum that housed Annabelle and the Doll of Shadows—investigated one of Marin’s dolls, and she couldn’t possibly handle everything on her own.

She led him to the living room and plopped down into her favorite chair, folding her legs beneath her. The boy sat on the edge of the couch, fidgeting with a cord bracelet on his wrist and refusing to look her in the eye. Marin leaned towards him.

“I don’t remember your name.”

“Alexander. Or Alex, my friends sometimes call me Alex.”

“Are we friends?” She was teasing, but Alexander looked genuinely embarrassed.

“I don’t—uh,” he said, blinking at her. He had nice eyes, a shade somewhere between gray and green, like lichen. “I would like to be. Someday. Ma’am.”

“Ma’am is gross. I’m twenty-six. Just Marin is fine.” She shifted in her chair, steepling her fingertips together as she looked at him. “Tell me about yourself, Alexander.”

“I’m a junior at the University of Texas in Austin. Communications major and photography minor. I work for the school newspaper during the year and I’m on the ultimate frisbee team. Uh—”

“No, no. All of this stuff was on your application. I think. I mean tell me about you, not what you do.” Alexander squirmed under her scrutiny, and Marin sighed. It would be a long summer if this boy couldn’t speak to her. “Forget it, doesn’t really matter. Let’s just get started with the orientation thing.” She stood, motioning for Alexander to follow her to the basement workshop.

It was, as usual, a controlled disaster. Glass eyes rested socketless in color-coded jars. Wigs were hanging from nails driven straight into the wall. Her painting table was covered in swatches and splotches, with her brushes sitting in a cup of filthy water that she really meant to change the night before. A half-finished head, the makeup completed but the eyes still just empty holes, sat drying atop a stack of newspapers. There was a laptop open on one of the side tables. Marin pointed Alexander towards it.

“Business laptop,” she said. “You’ll be running the website, handling the orders that come in, making sure the right orders go out in the mail, et cetera. Basically, everything except making dolls. I’ll help out when I can, but I’ve been swamped with commissions recently. See that?” It was originally an organized stack of papers, but with all of Marin’s rifling through it, it now somewhat resembled a heap. “That’s stuff I need to get done.” Alexander’s eyes widened at the mess, and Marin laughed. “So you see why I needed help.”

“I do, yeah. That’s… a lot.” He picked up the top paper, which was actually a stapled packet: the top layer was a commission form, typed up and uniform; the second, a ratty piece of notebook paper covered in Marin’s handwritten notes, all in pink pen; the third, a sketch of what the doll would look like. “How will you—I mean, will you be able to get them all done? On time?”

“I’m sure I can do it, with a trusty sidekick picking up my slack.” She put her hands on her hips, looking at Alexander long enough to make him fidget. He was nothing exceptional, she decided. He still had the chub of youth resting on his cheeks and stomach, and his limbs were a bit awkward when he moved them. He didn’t look like he was capable of deception. Maybe he really was just an oddball junior looking for his first internship. She’d keep him for now. “Are you my new sidekick, Alexander Last-Name?”

“Smith. My, uh, last name.”

“That’s really generic and you should consider changing it, but alright, Alexander Smith.” She held out a hand. “Sidekick?”

“Sure,” he said, trying to shake her hand with the paper still in his grasp. He turned pink at the tops of his ears, rushing to set the paper aside and properly link their palms together. “Yeah, that’s—that sounds great. Sidekick.”

.

It was dusk outside by the time Marin sent Alexander home. She had spent hours walking him through the things she needed him to take care of. The order forms and packaging requirements were straightforward enough. He offered to start several social media accounts for her, where she could showcase her work and generate even more interest. She very staunchly refused—did he see that pile of orders, she didn’t need any more interest, thank you very much—but after a while agreed that a small Instagram account would be fine, as long as it only showed pictures of the dolls and nothing else.

He’d been confused when she told him that business emails didn’t come straight to the business account. Instead, commissioners’ requests went to a secondary email that she pretended was her personal account—it made the process seem more intimate, she told him, and customers liked to think that they had a direct line to _the_ Marin Howard herself. They would pitch their request to her, and if she liked it, she’d send them an official order form that they would then send to the business email.

It was habit for her to check that secondary email before bed every night. It was where customers sent their praises and thanks after their dolls arrived, and she liked the validation that her work was satisfactory. Of course, it was also where people hounded her about doing the interviews for such-and-such ghost hunting show or begging for a doll that was guaranteed to have a demon with at least three Z’s in its name inside. Those emails were easy enough to weed out. They were always amusing, too, which ended her day on a good note.

She was sprawled out on her bed, her personal laptop opened in front of her as she snickered at an email from a young woman who wanted a voodoo doll of her roommate to mess with. It was very explicit in detailing exactly why this roommate deserved haunting—she ate all of the hummus when she got drunk, her shoes were somehow always muddy, and she was the _loudest_ squeaker during sex. That was a request that Marin wouldn’t be accepting, but it was funny to read. As she moved the email to a separate folder for rejections—Marin was an admitted email hoarder, never deleting things unless they had outdated deadlines—a familiar mist rolled into the room, bringing with it a slight chill that Marin had long grown used to.

“Remind me again exactly why you had to hire a _guy_?” The voice was disembodied and coarse, with a hint of a Spanish accent and a whole lot of snark. Marin rolled her eyes as the mist flowed around the bed, steadily gaining form until she could see the unimpressed lift of Rafael’s eyebrow.

“Because he was the most qualified.” She shrugged a little bit, clicking on another email. “And he’s kind of terrified of me. He won’t be snooping around.”

“Hm.” Rafael crossed his arms, glaring out the window as if Alexander were still standing on the porch below. “He thinks you’re attractive.”

“Well, duh. Look at me. I’m irresistible.” She flipped onto her back, her head hanging over the edge of the bed. Rafael’s thigh was right in front of her, but when she poked him, he dematerialized, reappearing upside down to match her. “I’m so great that I bring dead guys back from the grave.”

“I was a spirit before I met you.”

“Nuance.” In fact, Rafael had been in the house when Marin moved in. She’d had some idea that her house was haunted from the moment she unpacked the last box. Certain spots were colder than others. The neighbors’ dogs didn’t ever try to pee on her hydrangeas. She’d waited for months to see if blood would begin pouring from the showerhead or if bruises would start showing up after she slept. When none of that happened, she gave up on the ghost. But then the dirty dishes she left in the sink after dinner would be cleaned up by the morning, and things she’d thought she’d lost would miraculously appear on the top of her dresser, and Marin had started believing in the ghost again. She knew it was there.

“Not really.”

“Yes, really. You stuck around on Earth as a spirit because you knew, one day, you’d meet me.” She sat up, pretending to wipe a tear from her eye. “It’s truly a touching love story.”

“Ah, yes. I deliberately walked into that convenience store thirty years ago just knowing that it would get robbed and that I’d get a shotgun shell to the chest, all so I could become a spirit and come find you.” Rafael righted himself and levelled Marin with a deadpan look. “You weren’t even born yet.”

“Again,” she said, shutting down the laptop and heading into the en-suite bathroom to put on her pajamas and get ready for bed, “nuance.”

“You’re so exhausting,” Rafael groaned. “You’ll be the second death of me.”

“You know you love me. You always have.” Half of Marin was teasing, but the other half believed it. What other reason would a ghost have for spending his time doing housework for an eclectic half-wreck of a human? Rafael had always been helpful—kind, even—while sharing the house with Marin. Once she’d truly convinced herself of his existence, she started to leave him thank-you notes. She’d never forget the first day he’d written back: she’d opened the fridge to find a Post-It on the milk, warning her that it was expired. She had felt a little silly when her immediate reaction was to say ‘thank you’ aloud, but the responding ‘you’re welcome’ coming from behind the toaster was enough to confirm her theory: she did, indeed, have a spectral housemate.

She kept it to herself, of course. Her mother was the religious sort as well as an overreactor, who probably would have been on a plane from Virginia immediately with an exorcist and psychologist in tow. Her father was so estranged from the family that Marin doubted he’d even remember who she was. The only time anyone had even gotten close to suspecting paranormal activity in the house was when her best friend came to visit from Seattle. She had a freaky three-legged cat that had cornered Rafael in the hallway closet. Luckily, the cat was also old and Marin was easily able to convince her friend that it was just demented. She felt kind of bad that the cat got euthanized just a week later, but it really was old. It was probably the kindest thing to do.

Rafael had asked her, once, while he was hanging around her workshop, why she never had any overnight guests. He’d said this with air quotes and a quick up-down of his eyebrows that told Marin he meant men. She had told him about boyfriends that she was seeing, or cute guys that had asked for her number, but he was right: they were never in the house after dark.

It was an easy explanation, but one that Marin often dreaded having to say aloud. Asexuality was often dismissed or ridiculed, especially by the general public who believed that sex was an integral part of any relationship. She’d explained it to Rafael: how all of her pubescent fantasies were of the romantic variety and not the sexual one, how she was anxious on dates because of the expectations that came along with the ‘girlfriend’ label, how she generally didn’t like being touched and definitely didn’t appreciate hands that wandered up her shirt or between her thighs. She’d expected him to laugh—or worse, to give the ‘you just haven’t met the right person yet’ speech that her mother had given her the first time Marin mentioned asexuality—but instead he had just nodded. He’d told her that he was raised Catholic, and in his lifetime, he was waiting until marriage to have sex. Unfortunately, he’d been killed before that could happen.

If Marin considered it deeply, that discussion was probably the turning point for the two of them. They grew even closer after that day, spending more time together around the house. A few times, Rafael went with Marin on her errands, hiding in her shadow as she got groceries or went to the craft store. One night, he had taken a seat beside her on the couch as she dozed through a rerun of some period drama. He’d remained mostly in his mist form until then, a vague, shifting shape just to show Marin that he was in the room with her, but that night was the first night he had fully solidified. She remembered him commenting that she looked exhausted, and when she’d nodded, he had carefully put his arm around her shoulders. The cool weight of it wasn’t threatening, didn’t make her nervous like it would have had Rafael been a living man, so Marin had leaned into him. She’d said that it was nice. Then—never one to hesitate—she’d asked if he wanted to date her. That was three years ago, now.

Marin exited the bathroom, her teeth brushed and her face clean, to find that Rafael had turned down the comforter and fluffed her pillow. He was stretched out on his side of the bed, glaring at her.

“Uh-oh,” she said, tossing her dirty clothes in the hamper. “What did I do now?”

“Your new ‘sidekick’ texted you. Nine times in a row.” Marin checked her phone on the side table. Sure enough, there were new messages from Alexander. The first was to thank her for hiring him as her intern. The second, telling her that he wouldn’t let her down. The third one was a link to a porn video, and all the messages after that were apologies and explanations that the link was meant for his friend from school. Marin typed out a quick response— _hope he enjoys it, she looks crazy flexible_ —and then set her phone aside.

“You’re turning a little green, there.”

“I am _not_.” He was right. Rafael was as shadowed as ever, though the opaque mist that formed his body still allowed some degree of visibility through it. The cactui printed on Marin’s pillowcases showed through his torso. “But even if I were—which I’m not—it would only be because I’m literally sick at how much he has a crush on you. It’s gross. He’s like a stalker.”

“Says the actual, real-life ghost boy who lives in my house and has followed my every move for four years.”

“Excuse you,” Rafael said, a hand over his chest in mock hurt, “I am a ghost _man_.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Marin snuggled up to his side, dressed in her coziest flannel pajamas despite it being near the end of June—Rafael was cold to cuddle. She leaned into his touch when he combed his fingers through her hair. “Don’t worry about Alexander, Raf. You know you’re the one I want to be with.”

“I know,” he told her. “But I’m still going to keep an eye on that kid.”

“Do what you’ve got to do,” she invited him, “just don’t get caught. I can’t have the Ghostbusters coming in here. It’s bad for business.”

.

The new routine settled after just a couple of weeks. Alexander would show up at nine o’clock sharp every morning during the workweek and on Saturdays. Three times a week he’d bring breakfast, and the other three Marin would have breakfast ready for him. They would eat, and then head down to the basement workshop. Alexander played music from the laptop as he worked—soundtracks, mostly, from movies and video games, but with a healthy mix of classical pieces and ukulele lullabies. Marin kept conversation limited, existing in that holy space of artistic singlemindedness that drew her away from speaking. All that mattered were her brush strokes, the fall of each strand of hair, the tiny buttons and fabric patterns of the clothing that she stitched together. Usually she worked right through lunch, unable to keep her hands from their craft. Sometimes Alexander would slip out of the house and Marin would hardly notice until he reappeared, setting a burger at the edge of her workspace without a word.

While he was gone, Rafael would materialize in the workshop, offering quiet compliments or tidying up Marin’s messes. He never disturbed the dolls while he was solidified, only passing his mist over them. Marin would smile at him every time he did so. Her secret theory was that spirits so often haunted her dolls because they could sense Rafael’s presence, as if his intangible touch had left some kind of mark—an invitation to other entities. It was a pity that they couldn’t advertise their relationship, Marin thought idly from time to time. It would be nice to not have anything to hide from her friends and family—and it would stop her mother from constantly urging her to find a man and reproduce. Plus, the business would get a _ton_ of press coverage.

Rafael had asked her about it before. She suspected it was one of his insecurities, especially since he hid the question among humor. _Too bad you can’t tell your mom about me, he’d said. Every mother dreams of their daughter finding an undying love_. She wished she could tell everyone about Rafael, she really did. But if she was honest with herself, she also enjoyed the secrecy. There was something exciting about it, like she was a heroine in a romance novel who was sneaking her lover into her bedroom under cover of night, stashing him beneath her sheets when someone knocked on the door. But that was impractical, because her lover could evaporate and hide in the shadows, which is where he was now: above her, in the space between the basement wall and the wooden supports for the upstairs floor. She glanced up at him. He made one of his eyes materialize, just long enough for a wink. Marin snorted in what sounded like a giggle.

“What?”

“Hm?” She looked away from the dress patterns she was tracing onto a length of cotton fabric. Alexander was staring at her.

“You were laughing.”

“Was I?”

“… Were you?” He looked bewildered now, and Marin had to grin at him. He was too easy to tease.

“Relax. God, you’re so tense sometimes. You’re going to go gray early.” She swapped out her pencil for a pair of scissors, beginning to cut out the dress pieces. There was quiet for a moment, only interrupted by the soft _snick_ noises of metal slicing through the fabric. 

“Marin?”

“Yeah?”

“I wanted to ask—if it’s okay to ask, that is—why you started making dolls,” Alexander said. Marin shrugged, but was already a little on edge. It was the first personal question he’d asked, and it was innocent enough, but one question could easily turn into a barrage.

“My best friend really likes Pokémon,” she told him, “so I started off making her Pokémon plushies to decorate her house with. It’s a little weird, but she’s happy, and it makes holiday gifts easy. Then I started to make toys for the dogs at the animal shelter, then the little sack dolls for those life skills classes—you know, the one where the high schoolers get paired up and have to take care of a fake baby for a month?” She paused for a moment, looking at him with pursed lips. “Did you go to high school in Texas?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Which one?”

“Eastside Memorial.”

“I made your baby, then. That’s so weird.” She took the dolls to the school in person. She might’ve actually visited Alexander’s class while he was there. But she shrugged off the thoughts as she snipped away the last bit of fabric from the dress outline and began to pin the pieces together. “Anyways. That’s how I got started. Then I just moved into dolls from there.”

“Were they always haunted?”

“They’ve never been haunted here. If they get haunted afterwards, well… not my fault.” She hoped Alexander would drop it after getting his answer, but it was clear that after three weeks together, he’d grown more comfortable with her. The questions had been inevitable, she supposed, but with luck they wouldn’t have arrived until the summer-long internship was nearly over. Luck didn’t seem to be on her side.

“But you got popular because they get haunted.”

“Can’t help what people are into,” she said flippantly, then redirected the conversation back onto him. “You’re into it, obviously. Otherwise you wouldn’t have applied for the internship.”

“Ah, yeah…” She’d caught him. When she glanced up from where she’d begun sewing the dress, he was fiddling with his bracelet again.

“So, what’s the deal? Ghost hunter? Paranormal YouTuber? Someone who’s trying to prove that I’m a hack?”

“N-None of those!” He refused to look away from the laptop screen, even when she sauntered over to the desk and fixed him with a stare she was sure he could feel down to his bones. “I just… admire your skill, is all.” There was a scoff from the rafters above—Marin covered Rafael’s slip with a laugh of her own.

“Right. Because _so_ many twenty-one-year-old boys are interested in dollmaking.” It was cruel to pick on him when she knew the truth, but at the same time, it was oh-so-amusing to watch the blood rush to his ears. The barely-visible shadow behind Alexander’s chair grinned. Marin wandered back over to her side of the room, plucking pinches of polyester fiberfill out of a bag and stuffing the figure of a fabric doll. Quiet fell over the room, accompanied by the flowing sweetness of a violin solo.

“I think you’re great,” Alexander blurted suddenly, and loudly, startling Marin into pricking her fingertip as she was sewing the dress onto the filled-out doll. On top of that, she dropped the doll. And the needle.

“Hell,” Marin muttered, dropping to her knees to search for the sharp bit of metal before it wound up in her foot. When she stuck her injured hand into the dark space beneath her workbench, a tongue licked up the bead of blood that had risen to the surface of her skin. Then a set of teeth nibbled on her thumb. “Behave,” she chided, flicking at the darkness. Rafael chuckled, extending a quick hand to give her the lost needle. Marin stood back up, only to find that Alexander was standing right beside her, his face a little paler than it had been a moment ago.

“Was—Did I just see… fingers?”

“What?” Marin laughed airily, patting Alexander’s shoulder. “You’ve been staring at that screen too long—you’re imagining things.” She held her finger up, where a fresh droplet of blood had welled up. “I’m going to go upstairs for a band-aid. Take a break; go splash your face with some water or something.”

.

Rafael followed her up the stairs, sticking to her shadow and materializing the moment they passed the kitchen threshold. He was already snickering. “Poor kid,” he said. “Looked like he’d seen a ghost.”

“Ha, ha.” Marin dug around beneath the sink for the first aid kit, finding it behind a set of fish tank supplies that she didn’t remember buying. She’d never had a fish.  
“You don’t sound as amused as I am.”

“Shocker.” Her annoyance was rising, and Rafael held up his hands in the motion of surrender.

“Woah, hey. It was just a joke.”

“That’s not—ugh.” She plucked a band-aid out of the kit and plastered it over her thumb a little more aggressively than was necessary. The plastic covering the adhesive fell to the floor and she didn’t even bother to pick it up. Surely that would show Rafael just how angry she was. But just in case he missed the memo, she poked a finger against his chest; it passed through his form, sinking up to the second knuckle in mist. “What were you _thinking_ down there? Alexander saw you!”

“He just thinks he’s being overworked to the point of hallucination. Some kind of boss he has, huh? What a tyrant!”

“This is so not the time, Raf.” She frowned at him, waving a hand towards the stairs. “What if he hadn’t been so easy to convince, huh? What if he ran right out the front door and started telling everyone about you?” Rafael’s expression darkened, the amusement chased away by irritation.

“Why would it be such a bad thing for Alexander to know? At least then he wouldn’t be flirting with you constantly, right in front of me.”

“He doesn’t know you’re there!”

“That’s my point!” Rafael’s form was blurring around the edge, agitated whorls of smoke puddling out from his feet. He rose a couple inches in the air as he grew lighter, adding to the height difference between himself and Marin.

“Marin? Are you talking to me?” Alexander’s voice was pitched loud enough that he could be heard from the basement.

“No, no, I’m on the phone!” She called back, ignoring Rafael as he mouthed the words ‘tell him.’ 

“But you—”

“What?”

“Hang on,” Alexander said, and the stairs started to creak as he ascended them. Marin looked to Rafael in a panic, but the man simply solidified further, lowering himself back to the ground.

“Get out of here,” she hissed at him, shoving his shoulder.

“Tell Alexander about me.” He crossed his arms over his chest, planting his feet further apart so that he couldn’t be moved.

“Rafael Castillo, I swear to God, if you don’t disappear in the next three seconds I will suck you up into the vacuum cleaner!” The top stair creaked and Alexander pushed the door open. Marin had a rushed explanation on the tip of her tongue, but when he rounded the corner into the kitchen, he didn’t react. Rafael had slipped into the open cabinet at her feet. But he did pinch her ankle when she shifted to stand even closer to it, as if the darkness were incriminating. Alexander held up Marin’s phone.

“Your phone was downstairs,” he said, handing it over to her. There was a crease of confusion between his brows. “How were you—”

“House phone,” she said quickly, closing up the first aid kit and tossing it beneath the sink. Hopefully it hit Rafael’s nose. But not enough to break it, if it could be broken—he had a very nice nose, perfectly straight and just the right size for his face. She was quite fond of it. “Come on, let’s go back down. Lots to do, not lots of time to do it.”

.

The next week brought August, and it came with a vengeance. Marin’s air conditioning decided to give out on one of the hottest days on record, and though it had been repaired quickly, the workshop never really returned to its regular state of coolness. Alexander brought box fans from his family’s house, but their incessant white-noise whirring drove Marin to her wit’s end and she refused to use them in the basement. Instead Alexander set them up in the kitchen, taking the laptop to the table with him and letting the fans blow right in his face while he worked.

On top of that, the amount of doll commissions that Marin received had nearly doubled, people hoping to get their hands on a genuine Marin Howard ‘hauntable’ doll before Halloween. She was sleeping less and working more. Rafael had been even more hands-on recently, too, a constant presence beside Marin. His hands were wandering, and it was beginning to make Marin feel anxious when Alexander went home, knowing that she’d have to deal with Rafael. She thought she’d made her feelings clear—their relationship would not be involving sex, at all, ever. If that was something he wanted, he would have to find it somewhere else, and the thought of him leaving her was something she preferred to lock away in the furthest corner of her mind. But still it rose to the surface, a constant plague of ‘what if you aren’t enough for him anymore’ buzzing through her thoughts like locusts.

So when Alexander started making mistakes—mistakes that set her back even further than she already was, mistakes that should have been avoided—her patience was threadbare.

“Is that another returned package?” It was obvious, but she thought she’d ask anyway. Alexander gave her a look that was somewhere between scolded-puppy and pure bewilderment. He pointed to the address label on the box.

“I swear, Marin, I typed exactly what I saw on the order form. 101 Newbridge Street. I double-checked it— _triple_ -checked it!” The label read ‘101 Northbridge Street,’ which had led the package to a different address and then back to Marin, which meant that it was now decidedly not where it should be. That was the fourth package this week. She heaved a sigh, waving a hand at Alexander.

“Just… unpack that box and repackage it; I’ll write some kind of apology note for the client. Let me see the new label before you print it. And then after you print it, too.” He nodded and trekked back up the stairs to retrieve the laptop. Marin took a deep breath and got back to work, gluing a set of tiny false eyelashes onto a doll dressed as Red Riding Hood. She was just getting to the innermost corner of the second eye, the most delicate part, when a thud and then the sound of plastic rainfall made her jerk the entire strip of lashes off of the doll.

“Sorry! I’m sorry!” Alexander set the laptop down on the table before he dropped to the ground, scooping up tiny buttons from where he had tripped and knocked them out of their container. Marin grit her teeth, reattaching the lashes before she moved to help him. “I don’t know what’s going on, I’m not usually this clumsy…”  
“No, you aren’t,” Marin agreed. “You start taking drugs or something without me knowing? Been day drinking upstairs on the job?”

“No, I swear. I mean, I took a decongestant this morning, but I’ve been taking those for years and they’ve never made me disoriented like this before.”

“Then what’s the deal?”

“I don’t know,” he said with a helpless shrug, pouring the last of the buttons into their container and righting it on the countertop. Marin felt for him, she really did, but his mistakes were growing more and more costly. He had nearly ruined an order sheet when he set down his sweating water bottle too close to it. One doll had been sent back broken because he hadn’t properly bubble-wrapped it before shipping it out. He had accidentally wiped out Marin’s entire playlist of music, and busted her external speakers. But he looked so shamefaced about it all that Marin couldn’t imagine him doing it on purpose. She wiped a bead of sweat from her temple.

“Let’s take a break,” she suggested. “We need milkshakes.”

“But the orders—”

“They’ll wait. And they’ll be better when we’re better. And we get better through milkshakes.”

.

When they were in the workshop, Marin and Alexander were colleagues and nothing more. Going out for milkshakes put them squarely in the friendship zone. Marin figured this out as Alexander drove them away from Marin’s suburban neighborhood and into town. In hindsight, perhaps it was a bad idea, especially since she could feel Rafael’s presence in the shade behind her seat.

He stayed within her shadow as she exited the car, taking a seat at an outdoor table on the patio of the shop that was advertised as the home of the best homemade ice cream in Texas. Alexander headed straight for the door, pausing with one hand on the handle and looking back at Marin.

“What flavor do you want?”

“Just get yours, and I’ll hold the table. Then we can switch.”

“It’s like four bucks,” he said with a shrug that was a little too nonchalant. “I can get yours, too.” Before she could protest again, he told her to consider it as an apology for being such a klutz in the past few days. Marin finally gave in, asking for a chocolate shake with no cherry on top. Once Alexander disappeared inside, Rafael thumped the bottom of her foot.

“Knock it off,” she grumbled at him.

“Stop flirting,” he griped right back. A shih-tzu at a table nearby started to growl, its ears pricked forward at the sound of Rafael’s voice. “You shouldn’t let him buy you food. That’s what boyfriends do.”

“Well, it’s not like you can do it. Someone might as well pamper me.” She knew it was going too far, crossing a line, even as she said it. The dog was starting to bark now, and its owner swatted its rear, apologizing to Marin. She brushed it off with a quick joke about how she must smell like cats. “Sorry, Raf. I didn’t mean that.” He didn’t answer, didn’t even acknowledge her, though she knew he was still hidden in the shade from the table’s umbrella. “Silent treatment now, huh? Fine.”

Alexander arrived with the two shakes, each with a straw poked through the lid and napkins wrapped around the Styrofoam cups. Marin thanked him and for a long moment they were silent, sucking up the refreshing coldness of the ice cream. Then they settled into easy conversation, commenting on people that were walking down the street and telling stories about their school days. Little by little, Alexander relaxed, actually cracking a few jokes without stumbling through them. That was a surprise. Marin hadn’t expected him to be funny.

She found herself enjoying his company without a hint of anxiety. He was animated, suddenly, as if being out of the confines of the basement had freed him to be himself. Maybe part of that had to do with her. There, she was the Marin Howard, infamous craftswoman of haunted dolls. Here, she was just Marin, just another Texas resident trying to combat the late summer heat. It was kind of nice to be normal. Well, as normal as she could be, with a sulking spirit boyfriend beneath the table.

“This was nice,” Marin decided, fifteen minutes past when her shake had run dry. Alexander patted his stomach, nodding in agreement with her. “We should make Wednesdays our shake days. They’re good for the soul.”

“I won’t forget your order,” Alexander said, then turned red. “I mean for next Wednesday. If I get the shakes on my own, or whatever. So you can work.”

“I got it.” She laughed, getting up from the table and throwing her trash in the bin on the way out. Alexander followed her example. “Let’s get back to it, sidekick,” she said, elbowing him in the ribcage as they walked side by side to the car. She braced for a reaction from Rafael, but never received so much as a pinch.

.

That night, Rafael didn’t hang around the kitchen while Marin cooked and ate dinner. He didn’t speak to her through the bathroom door as she got ready for bed. She didn’t see a single wisp of shadow as she scrolled through her email inbox, and he didn’t materialize on the bed beside her when she tucked herself in. At first, she was annoyed with him for his petty jealousy—they had been dating for three years, and he was going to pout over milkshakes with an intern? Clearly ‘older and wiser’ didn’t apply when the age was gained after death.

But the more she thought about it, watching the ceiling fan rotate above her, she began to see his side of things. She would be pretty frustrated if she were in his position: forced to hide in dark corners, unable to openly be with the person she loved unless they were alone. And she was deeply regretting her earlier comment. It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t do the things that a living man could. It was cruel of her to have said it.

“You know I didn’t mean it,” she said into the darkness of the room. “I’ve been really on edge lately with all the work and correcting Alexander’s mistakes. I took my frustration out on you, and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.” She waited for a few minutes, until there was a movement at the foot of the bed.

“I guess I shouldn’t be upset, either. You can’t help it if he has a thing for you.” Rafael floated up to his usual spot in bed, solidifying so that Marin could wrap an arm around his waist and curl into his side. “You’re just so irresistible.”

“Got that right,” she teased, feeling the hum of his laughter in his chest. The doubts that had been torturing her were quieted by the sound. Her relationship with Rafael was fine. Her friendship with Alexander was fine. With the work they’d done after the milkshakes, she was on track to finish the dolls on time. Her world felt right again, with Rafael’s hand pressed comfortably against her shoulder blade.

.

Alexander ruined the doll the next day, right before his internship was due to finish. He had come over to Marin while she was hot gluing a wig into place, eager to show her a comment from a fan on her new Instagram page. He was reading it aloud, leaning into Marin’s personal space so that she could follow along with his words on the screen of his phone. When he’d finished, she had looked up at him with a grin on her face.

“That’s such a great compli—” Then Alexander’s lips were on hers, cutting off the rest of the word. There was a split second of contact, and then several things happened so quickly that they seemed to occur all at once. The collar of Alexander’s shirt was yanked backwards. Marin shoved his chest with the hand not holding a hot glue gun. Alexander, caught off guard by the sudden onslaught, lost his balance. His hip slammed into the workbench. The doll, perched on a stand so that its acrylic outer coat could finish drying, toppled over.

It was a masterpiece of a doll; Marin had spent three days perfecting every last detail. It was the seventh doll requested by an older woman in Johannesburg, one of Marin’s favorite clients because of her pickiness. She wasn’t content with just a doll. She wanted her dolls to have freckles in specific places, or to have frayed holes in their clothing, or to have curly hair but with just one piece that never curled properly. This doll had been the same: eyes a shade of blue that could be seen as purple in the right lighting, a beauty mark below the left corner of her mouth, a tiny silver scar that bisected the outermost edge of her eyebrow, her hair in a bun with a snowflake-shaped clip in it.

The doll fell forward when the table shook, and the damp acrylic picked up miniscule flakes of dust and fuzz. The bun fell to pieces with the impact, and the doll’s freed hair ended up in a small puddle of hot glue that wasn’t fully dried. The snowflake clip that Marin had painstakingly sculpted from nothing was gone.

Alexander’s jaw dropped open when he saw what had happened. Marin froze, her hot glue gun still dribbling as her finger hadn’t left the trigger.

“Marin, I—”

“It’s fine,” she said, her voice tight as she set down the glue gun.

“I swear, I didn’t mean to—”

“I know you didn’t. Accidents happen.”

“No, I don’t mean about the doll—I mean, yes, that was an accident, but I meant about kissing you!” He shook his head, his eyes wide. “I didn’t do it on purpose! We were just so close together and it was like someone pushed my head forward—”

“Enough,” Marin said wearily, cutting him off. “I need a wet paper towel from the kitchen. And get anything that can help get glue out of hair: rubbing alcohol, dish soap, shampoo, aspirin, nail polish remover, olive oil… hell, get peanut butter, too.” Alexander nodded jerkily, turning around and running up the stairs to gather the materials Marin had requested. She took the doll in both hands, carefully prying the glue-sticky hair away from the workbench. The doll’s face was fuzzed and dirty.

“I’ll _end_ that boy if he puts his mouth anywhere near you again,” Rafael snarled. His body was fully formed but the mist writhed within its confines, as if it were eager to wrap its tendrils around Alexander’s neck. He trailed off into Spanish, but the heat behind his words was still obvious.

“Raf, please,” Marin said softly, staring at the doll and feeling despair wash over her. Three days of hard work, all gone. She’d have to start over again. Already she knew it wouldn’t be as perfect as the one she held in her hands. “Not now.” He fell silent, wrapping a comforting arm around Marin’s waist. His free hand brushed at the doll’s matted hair.

“I’m so sorry,” he told her. “It never should have happened. She was an innocent bystander.” Something about the way he said it made Marin remember Alexander’s rushed explanation just a few moments before. She frowned at the doll before setting it to the side and turning to face Rafael.

“He said he didn’t mean to do it,” she said.

“Hm?”

“Alexander. He said he didn’t mean to kiss me.”

“Well, clearly he did, or it wouldn’t have happened.” Rafael lifted an eyebrow coolly. “Unless you were the one kissing him, which you weren’t.”

“No, I wasn’t. But… He said he felt like someone pushed his head down. Like someone made him do it.” Ghosts couldn’t sweat, but Marin swore she could see a bit of moisture on Rafael’s forehead, even as he shrugged.

“There are stranger ways to explain impulsive decisions. Divine intervention, the call of the wild, the biological imperative…”

“Do _not_ bullshit me right now, Raf.” The edge in her voice had its intended effect; Rafael flinched, almost imperceptibly but just enough for Marin to confirm her own theory. “You made him do it, didn’t you? You pushed his head.” He must’ve known he was caught, because Rafael held up his hands in a placating kind of way. But Marin wouldn’t be placated. “How many of those accidents were your fault? How long have you been framing him?”

“Technically, I think the term is ‘haunting,’” Rafael said.

“Don’t you dare make this into a joke! You’ve been sabotaging me through Alexander! And for what? Jealousy? Are you serious?”

“I never meant for it to go this far,” Rafael insisted, motioning towards the ruined doll on the tabletop. “You know I’d never do anything to hurt you like this.”

“And yet here we are!” She was close to yelling now; she didn’t care if Alexander heard her. “How could you do this to me?” Tears were stinging the backs of her eyes now, but she refused to let them come to the surface. “Is it even really him that you hate, or is it me?” Rafael reached out for her, but she stepped away from him. “Just… go. I have work to do.”

“Marin…”

“Please. Just go.” He hesitated for a moment longer but vanished into the rafters when he heard the stairs begin to creak, signaling Alexander’s descent. Marin leaned against the table for a half-second, taking a deep breath to steady her emotions before she could face the stammered apologies of her innocent intern.

.

She sent Alexander home early, deciding to call it quits herself after she tidied up the workshop. There was no point in restarting the old woman’s doll, not while she still felt so shaky. It seemed melodramatic to say that Rafael had betrayed her, but that was what had happened. She just couldn’t figure out why. Was it because she had hired Alexander in the first place? Because the two of them were becoming friends? Or was Rafael simply tired of her, and looking for a scapegoat to give him an out? Anything seemed possible, and the weight of those possibilities drove Marin to the floor of the living room. She couldn’t bear to sit on the couch; her vision was blurring, and she couldn’t look at the plush brown cushions without seeing the first night Rafael had materialized for her.

He joined her silently, his spine aligned with hers as they sat back to back. The chill seeped through her shirt, raising goosebumps on the soft insides of her elbows. She rubbed them away in lieu of speaking.

“You know that I died abruptly,” he said. His voice sounded defeated, rougher than normal. “I think that’s why I became a spirit on Earth instead of going straight to Heaven. Or Hell. Whichever I deserve. I’ve been happy to spend my days here, with you. But… I never told you that I know how to move on.” He sighed, and the room seemed to get even colder. “All I have to do is go back to my body. It’s buried in a cemetery in New Mexico, on my family’s plot.” He was quiet for another long moment. The next time he spoke, his voice was just above a whisper. “If you want me to go, I’ll go.”

“I don’t,” Marin said, and she could feel the smoke lose its tension against her back. “I just want to know… if you still want to be here. If you were just using this thing with Alexander as a way to get away…”

“I wasn’t!” He disappeared, reforming in front of her. His expression was earnest enough to make Marin start to cry. “Why would you think that?”

“It’s been three years and I know that you were okay with the no-sex stuff when we started dating, but then you were touching me so much more… And you seemed so upset when I wasn’t letting you touch me… I thought it wasn’t okay anymore. I thought I wasn’t enough for you.”

“Truly?” When Marin nodded, Rafael started to laugh. She had enough fight left in her to smack his arm. “Sorry, sorry. It’s just that _I_ thought I wasn’t enough for _you_.”

“Seriously?” She sniffled and giggled at the same time.

“Well, three years with a dead guy is a really long time,” he said with a self-deprecating laugh. “Then here was this living guy and he had a crush on you. You two could be normal together, outside of the house, in public. You could tell your mother about him. I thought you might want that.”

“We really need to work on our communication,” Marin mused, and Rafael chuckled again.

“Yes, we do.” He tangled his fingers together with hers. “Is it something we can look forward to doing in the future? Together?”

“Till death do us part. Or, y’know. Doesn’t.”

“Hardy-har.”

.

Marin had been called a haunted doll maker for years, ever since people started to notice that her creations were a trend in reports of paranormal activity. She knew that she was only famous—or perhaps infamous—because of the dolls’ tendency to attract spirits. Nobody cared who she herself actually was, outside of the wild rumors that followed all paranormal celebrities. There were speculations that she was a real witch, living deep in the Appalachian Mountains and shipping her packages out of a P.O. box in Austin. Some people said that Marin Howard was a collective, a group of professionals who had been trained to make their dolls with the exact same style so that nobody could tell whose work was whose. There were a few—there were _always_ a few—who claimed that the dolls were made by the government and that they weren’t possessed, they were just extremely advanced spy gear planted in the houses of the ‘sheep.’ One particularly memorable person wrote an article in the Fortean Times, convinced that Marin herself was a spirit.

Alexander changed all of that when he returned to school in the fall. He published his own story on the front page of the school newspaper, telling the whole campus about the ghost man living in Marin Howard’s house. He recounted everything that Marin had told him on the second-to-last day of his internship: the way she had met Rafael, the events that had solidified their relationship, how Rafael had been haunting Alexander and causing all of his accidents. He was even able to describe Rafael, which was a miracle considering he had fainted when Rafael materialized in front of him. Marin didn’t think he’d seen much of Rafael at all. Maybe he’d taken some extremely lucky liberties with the description. She read through the article online, where it had been reposted by approximately every paranormal fanatic in the world. Marin Howard was not just a haunted doll maker anymore. Now, Marin Howard was a haunted dollmaker. Funny how a space could make all the difference.

“I don’t know what he thought he’d accomplish,” Rafael said mildly, reading the article over Marin’s shoulder as they lounged together on the bed. “Telling a bunch of ghost-crazy weirdos that _the_ Marin Howard is not only a dynamo at creating hauntable objects, but that she’s also dating a spirit? Did he think they’d suddenly hate you or something?”

“I don’t know,” Marin said with a shrug. If that was what he’d wanted, he had failed. The business was more popular than ever, with requests pouring in—not just for dolls, but for interviews, autographs, advice on living with spirits, a Cosmo-style step-by-step on how to make a ghost fall in love. “Maybe he just wanted to kick-start his journalism career.”

“Well, congratulations to him,” Rafael snickered. “I doubt the New York Times is going to be fighting the Wall Street Journal for the chance to hire some crazy kid who thinks his former boss is getting laid by Casper.”

“He never said we were having sex,” Marin said with a laugh.

“Nuance,” Rafael replied, kissing Marin’s temple.

“You know I’ll need to hire more help to fill all this new demand,” she told him, and Rafael groaned, flopping onto his back on the bed.

“Don’t remind me.”

“I’ll just make a new application form. It’ll say, ‘Can you work for me without being attracted to me? Because otherwise my ghost boyfriend will quietly haunt you until you think you’re the clumsiest person on the planet, then he’ll make you kiss me and then threaten your life.’”

“It would save you a lot of time, to be honest.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.” She closed her laptop, putting it on the bedside table before laying down beside Rafael. “Don’t suppose you know any spirits who want a part-time job?”

“Oh, sure, let me just send out a mass email to all of the ghosts in a twenty-mile radius. ‘Please, come and live in my human girlfriend’s house and help her run her dollmaking company.’”

“I would be like a spooky Cinderella,” she teased. “Instead of mice and birds, I have undead souls.” She tapped a rhythm against Rafael’s chest. 

“You have your thoughtful face on.”

“Just thinking about my next business venture,” she told him.

“This, I have to hear.”

“’Die’phones,” she said, already grinning at the way Rafael cringed away from the pun. “It’s the communication device that the undead community has always needed!”

“Stop right there.”

“All of the emojis are ghosts.”

“No.”

“I’ll make spirit-friendly apps, too! Ghost Facebook! Ghost Tinder!”

“Please,” Rafael begged, “just stick to your dolls.”


End file.
